Mission Road Read online

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  She met him at the door.

  As always, the sight of her stirred an unpleasant mix of feelings—resentment, longing, grief. She was the closest thing he had to family. She was also his deepest war wound—a scar that wouldn’t heal.

  Her short black hair was disheveled; there was a long smear of baby food on her sleeve. The top button of her blouse was undone. Her collarbone made a smooth shadow against her skin. A beautiful woman, but she had interrogator’s eyes—dark as magnets.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “I have an answer for you. ” His voice sounded strangely dry, even to him. “May I come in?”

  ONCE HE WAS INSIDE, SHE DID a good job of acting calm, but he knew her too well. Her shoulders were tense. Her fingertips tapped against her thumbs.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” she called from the kitchen. “You want a soda?”

  He stared at the photograph of Lucia on the living room table. He was always amazed how strongly Ana resembled her mother.

  Next to the photo was Ana’s laptop—crime scene images frozen on the screen.

  “Where’s Ralph?” he asked.

  “Out. Was that a no on the soda?”

  “Out?” He tried to keep his voice level. “You were supposed to keep him here. This is a conversation about him. ”

  “We got Sprite, Diet Coke—”

  “Ana, goddamn it. You’re out of time. ”

  She popped a can of Sprite. “This conversation isn’t about Ralph. It’s about you. ”

  “Me?”

  She leaned against the kitchen doorway. “I can’t let you skate. ”

  He could feel the situation unraveling. This was not the way it was supposed to happen. Ralph was the enemy. Ana had to realize that. Ralph was supposed to be here, to be provoked into showing how violent he was, how capable of murder.

  Carefully, he said, “You’re not serious. ”

  “You left a trail. ” Ana’s voice was heavy with anger, as if he had let her down. “You were sloppy. How could you think I wouldn’t find you?”

  Her expression stirred bad memories—memories he couldn’t tolerate.

  “You have any idea what you’re saying?” he asked. “Me, for Christ’s sake?”

  She nodded to the computer. “Read my notes. ”

  He glanced at the morgue photo on the screen. He touched the keyboard, brought up a minimized document—Ana’s draft report on the investigation.

  It didn’t take long to see that she’d done her homework. Every mistake he’d made, then and now—neatly documented.

  He felt claustrophobic, dizzy, like he was waking up inside a coffin.

  The irony was horrible. Yet she’d done good detective work, maybe even enough to convict.

  “Ralph Arguello is poison,” he managed. “You don’t know who your friends are anymore. ”

  “I’m telling you first because a confession would be easier. We can get you some kind of deal. Protection. Otherwise, once word gets out, you’re a dead man. ”

  His jaw tightened. She wasn’t going to change her mind. She would risk a confrontation, her career, everything, rather than see something happen to that goddamn criminal she’d married.

  He put his hand at his waist, felt the butt of the . 357 under his coat. “You’re right. ”

  “Give me a statement, then. ”

  “I’m a dead man. ” He brought out the gun. “If word gets out. ”

  Her face paled. “You won’t shoot me. I’m going to call now. We’ll get you a lawyer. ”

  She walked to the hallway phone—tension still in her shoulders, but damn, she was keeping it together well.

  The thing was: She might be right. He wasn’t sure he could hurt her. Her, of all people.

  She picked up the receiver.

  “Put it down,” he ordered.

  “I’m calling dispatch. ”

  Eighteen years of fear, shame and anger boiled to the surface—eighteen years of living with that worthless kid’s blood on his conscience.

  Ana would never understand what had happened that night. He had sworn to die rather than let the truth come out.

  “Put the phone down,” he pleaded.

  “No choice. ” She started to dial.

  The first shot surprised him almost as much as it did her. The bullet tore through her pants leg. She dropped her Sprite and stood there, stunned, as a line of blood trickled down her ankle. Sprite gurgled from the overturned can on the hardwood floor.

  She stared at him, silently saying his name.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. And he meant it. Goddamn it, he had never wanted this.

  Ana reached for her own weapon, but of course her shoulder holster was empty.

  She did not believe in guns around the baby. This house was a sanctuary.

  Which may have been why his second shot, leveled at her chest, rang out so alarmingly loud.

  Chapter 2

  MONDAY MORNING I GOT A PAYING CLIENT.

  Wednesday afternoon I killed him.

  Friday evening I buried him.

  The Tres Navarre Detective Agency is a full-service operation. Did I mention that?

  My girlfriend, Maia Lee, drove me home from the funeral. We cruised down Commerce in her BMW, discussing the likelihood of my PI license being revoked. Maia thought the odds were high. Being a lawyer, she probably knew what she was talking about.

  “The criminal charges don’t worry me,” she said. “The DA didn’t sound serious about filing. ”

  “That’s because he wanted your phone number. ”

  “But the licensing board . . . I mean, killing clients—”

  “Generally frowned upon. ”

  “Tres Navarre: impeccable judge of character. ”

  “Oh, shut up. ”

  The guy I’d killed, Dr. Allen Vale, had asked me to find his estranged wife. He said he needed to work out an inheritance problem with her. He hadn’t seen her in five years. They’d never gotten an official divorce. No hard feelings. The relationship was old history. He just needed to sort out a few legalities.

  He wore a tailored suit. He laughed at my jokes. He paid cash in advance.

  I took the job.

  Two days later I located his wife, living in San Antonio under an assumed name. I met Dr. Vale at my office and gave him her new identity and address. He thanked me, calmly walked out to his car, loaded a shotgun and drove away. That’s when I realized I’d made a mistake.

  I called the police, sure. But I also grabbed my father’s old . 38 and followed Vale straight to his estranged wife’s house.

  She was standing in her front yard watering her Mexican marigolds. She dropped the hose when she saw Vale trudging toward her with the shotgun.

  No police in sight.

  I had the choice of either stopping Vale or watching him murder his wife. I yelled at him to drop the gun. He turned on me and fired.

  Three minutes later the police surrounded the house.

  They found me standing next to Allen Vale’s Infiniti, a dinner-plate-size shotgun hole in the driver’s side door, two feet to my left. The good doctor was sprawled on the lawn with an entrance wound through the middle of his silk tie, his estranged wife on her knees, her face chalky with terror, her forgotten garden hose spraying blood and marigold petals down the sidewalk.

  Maia had asked me why I wanted to go to the memorial service and face Vale’s family. I told her closure. That was a lie. The truth was probably closer to Catholic guilt. I was raised to believe repentance is not enough. One must emotionally flagellate oneself as much as possible.

  Maia reached across the car seat and squeezed my hand. “You did what you had to. ”

  “Would you have shot him?”

  She drove another block before answering. “I would’ve talked to the wife before giving her away. I think I would’ve seen through the client’s bullshit at the first meeting. ”

  “Thanks
. I feel better. ”

  “You’re a guy. What’s obvious to me isn’t to you. ”

  “A woman who collects assault rifles is lecturing me on sensitivity. ”

  Maia called me a few endearing pet names in Mandarin. In the years we’d been together, I’d learned all kinds of helpful Chinese phrases like Idiot white boy and My father told me not to date barbarians.

  We drove over the Market Street Bridge. Below, the Riverwalk’s fifty-foot cypress trees blazed with Christmas lights like frozen fireworks.

  In the multicolored glow, Maia looked unusually pensive.

  She was beautiful in funeral black. Her dark ponytail almost disappeared against the linen dress. Her caramel skin was smooth, radiating such obvious health that she might’ve been mistaken for twenty-five rather than forty-five.

  There was something timeless about her—a kind of fierce resilience that might’ve been carved from jade. Before losing everything to the Communists, her ancestors had been warlords of Guangzhou Province. I had no doubt Maia would’ve made them proud.

  She didn’t seem to notice the holiday lights or the traffic. Her eyes stayed fixed on some point a thousand miles away.

  “What’re you thinking?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, a little too quickly.

  She turned on South Alamo, headed into Southtown.

  First Friday. The usual hordes were out in force for the monthly gallery openings. Cars circled for parking. Drunk socialites and Nuevo Bohemians wandered the streets. It was as if God had upended all the chic restaurants and coffeehouses in town, mixed the patrons thoroughly in alcohol sauce, and dumped them into my neighborhood to find their way home.

  Maia parked at the hydrant on the corner of Pecan, in front of my two-story Victorian.

  A lady in a mink coat was throwing up in my front yard. She’d set her wineglass on top of my business sign:

  TRES NAVARRE DETECTIVE AGENCY

  Professional Investigations

  (This is not an art gallery)

  As our headlights illuminated her fur jacket, the lady turned and scowled at us. She staggered off like a sick bear, leaving her wineglass and a steaming puddle.

  “Ah, the romance of San Antonio,” said Maia.

  “Stay the night,” I said. “It gets better. ”

  “I have to get back to Austin. ”

  I took her hand, felt the tension in her fingers. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. Live dangerous. Sam would love to see you. ”

  She gave me a look I couldn’t quite read. “I have to catch up with work. I’ve been busy bailing out my no-good boyfriend. ”

  “Men,” I said.

  She leaned in closer. “Some of them, anyway. ”

  We kissed.

  I tried my best to convince her that one night together really wouldn’t hurt.

  She pulled away. “Tres . . . ”

  “What is it?”

  She dabbed her lipstick. “Nothing. ”

  “Something’s wrong. ”

  “I have to go—”

  “Maia?”

  “—if I want to get home before midnight. ”

  We sat there with the car idling. A group of drunk art gallery patrons parted around us.

  “Multiple choice,” I offered. “Work or personal?”

  Maia’s eyes betrayed a glint of desperation—like a cage door was closing on her. “I’ll call you, okay?”